Air Canada eyes Southeast Europe for future growth

Air Canada has significantly expanded its long-haul operations this year with Southeast Europe proving to be a strong drawcard for passengers, notably Greece. With the carrier planning to take delivery of a number of aircraft over the coming year and a half it has earmarked the region for further growth. The carrier’s plans give renewed hope it may include Zagreb in its future line-up of destinations, which it initially planned to launch on a seasonal basis in 2022, taking over from its leisure subsidiary Air Canada Rouge. The carrier has also recently expressed interest in serving Belgrade but a restrictive clause in the bilateral Air Service Agreement between the two countries remains a deterrent. On the other hand, authorities in Macedonia are willing to support the introduction of flights from Canada.

Speaking at a press conference last week, Mark Galardo, Air Canda’s Executive Vice President, Revenue and Network Planning, said, “We continue to see strong demand for southern European destinations. With continued high demand for visiting friends, relatives and leisure travel, our increased services to these destinations give customers more options than ever before”. He added, “We’ve had problems with Boeing, and we’ve had problems with Airbus. Both manufacturers have had issues. With Airbus we were hoping to get the A321XLR. It should’ve been flying by now. But it’s about eighteen months late relative to our initial expectations, and that’s really slowed us down. We’ve had to lease in a bunch of airplanes to make up for that gap. We think we have another eighteen months or so of some aircraft issues. Once we get on the other side of this, we’re going to have seventy-plus new airplanes coming at us, and we’re going to be resuming our growth. Some existing planes will be retired but it’s a huge amount of growth on the horizon. The net effect will be a substantial increase in our size.

Air Canada Rouge discontinued its flights between Toronto and Zagreb in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. The airline no longer has equipment suitable to serve the Croatian capital after it retired its wide-body Boeing 767 jets. Air Canada planned to launch its own seasonal flights between Toronto and Zagreb in June 2022, however, ticket sales were discontinued after several weeks. Air Canada initially scheduled to operate three weekly flights between the two cities with its 297-seat A330-300 aircraft. The carrier planned to run a total of 54 flights each way with 32.076 seats on sale between the two cities. On the other hand, the Canadian flag carrier recently said it was “looking into flights between Toronto and Belgrade”. Although the revised bilateral Air Service Agreement between the two countries is liberal in nature, it has a restrictive clause, limiting the designated flag carriers to two weekly flights, unless the two parties agree otherwise.

Macedonia has also pursued flights to Canada in recent years. The Macedonian Civil Aviation Agency said it had received a “favourable” response from a Canadian carrier over the introduction of flights to Skopje during the peak summer and peak winter travel periods. Last year, the CEO of operator TAV Macedonia, Nejat Kurt, noted, “Skopje Airport is ready to serve intercontinental flights and we would support any airline that is ready to establish the first nonstop service to North America. Currently, our diaspora travels to North America by transferring through airports in Istanbul, Belgrade, Vienna, Warsaw, and Frankfurt”.